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All of my friends babysat when we were growing up to make money. But no, I wasn’t down with that. Babies equaled zero fun. Parents tend to look down on you when you teach toddlers to do tricks for food, you can’t use babies as pillows when watching TV as you can with large dogs, and you can’t really race babies and bet Garbage Pail Kids cards on the outcome (or perhaps you can, but the races would be a lot slower and more boring). The only really gross thing you have to deal with with animals is picking up poop, and I for one will always say dog poop trumps baby poop in the “which is less disgusting” category any day. As is often the way with me, when it is Animals versus People, Animals win.

Preteen Me = A No Baby Zone. I was the Anti-Babysitter's Club.

That said, I chose to walk, groom, feed, and watch dogs, cats, birds, fish, horses and any other animals you could throw my way. I turned it into a mini business. In fact, I was so into it, my business grew and I needed to get a friend to join me, and my awesome grandparents who owned an engraving company gifted us with our own business cards. That’s right, I was nine and had my own business card for the very originally named Dog Walkers, Inc.

Anyway, example four of animal assholery. Let’s call him Rex, because that was his name. Rex was a gorgeous German Shepherd owned by a neighborhood family who had three girls around my age whom I was friends with. Rex was sweet and nice and fun to play with. As it turned out, Rex was also an Asshole. One March, when his family was away on vacation, they asked me to feed and watch him, something I had done for them often. He stayed at their house down the street, and my mother would take me over in the mornings to walk and feed him before school. After school I’d spend some quality time with him. This was working out quite well for us for about a week when I stopped by on the morning of my birthday. Since it’s right next to St. Patrick’s Day and I’m Irish, my mother made me a huge tray full of lime green Jello shamrocks to pass out to the class and cement myself as super cool in the social standings. They were in a metal dish and covered in tinfoil. Why I brought this into the house with me to feed Rex, I don’t know, but I did. I walked in, and Rex was waiting diligently by his empty food bowl, staring down at it with the precision of… well, with the precision of a German Shepherd.

Shepherdus Germanus (I made that up) says: "I am smarter than you are."

After a few pleasantries, I placed my treasured shamrocks on the floor and leaned over to fill up Rex’s bowl. Out of nowhere, he turned and snapped at me, his white killer-dog teeth gleaming. I truly believe he only meant to snap the air (I’m defending the abuser! I’m so After School Special!), but he caught my temple and scraped down my cheek. Shocked, I backed up, hand against my bleeding face, wondering if I still had an eyeball and if not, how much attention that would get me. Meanwhile, Rex, knowing he did something very Bad Dog, decided to act like nothing had happened (a move I also employ from time to time) and causally walked towards the door, a sign to take him for a walk. In doing so, he walked straight across my tray of shamrock Jello, efficiently obliterating them under his huge Germanic paws. You thought he was going to eat them, didn’t you? Ha, a twist! I am M. Night Shamalan! German Shepherds, unlike me, are too smart to eat that crap.

I ran screaming to my mother who was waiting in the car. “Oh my God, what happened?!” she yelled.

“Rex STEPPED ON MY SHAMROCKS! They are RUINNNNED!” I screamed back. I had priorities and my bloody face was a distant second. My mom, never one to think you’re injured unless she sees actual bone jutting out, (did I mention we’re Irish?), took me back into the house and cleaned off my wounds.

“Superficial, “ she deemed them. While I had teeth marks trailing down the right side of my face, no real damage was done, other than to my birthday dessert. And my mother promptly reminded me, and this is true, that it was really my fault, because you never ever under any circumstances EVER lean over a dog’s food bowl, especially a dog who is not currently with his family and whose breed is used by law enforcement to hunt out and harm bad guys like a furry heat-seeking missile. So no, Rex was not an asshole for “biting” me in the face. But he was an asshole for stepping on my birthday dessert and ruining my chance at upping my social standing. I blame him for not becoming prom queen* years later. Not cool, Rex, not cool.

"Half the people here hate me, and the other half of the people here only like me because they think I pushed someone under a bus. This is not good." -Mean Girls, prom queen scene

*Okay, my school didn’t have a prom queen. But I bet if Rex hadn’t ruined those shamrocks, I would’ve been so beloved people would have voted me prom queen, even though I went to an all-girls high school and we didn’t do that.